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Persi Diaconis - magician-turned-mathematician (2004)
- mahmud 17y agoGreat read! At a friend's suggestion, he bought himself a copy of William Feller's textbook An Introduction to Probability and Its Applications but couldn't read it because he didn't know calculus. He was 18 at the time. .. At 24, Diaconis began taking evening math classes at the City College of New York. He performed magic tricks during the day to pay his way through school. .. Martin Gardner makes an interesting cameo appearance in this man's life as well.
- TriinT 17y agoAn interesting passage from the article: He still doesn't [own a computer]. He says he got sick of adjusting to new operating systems and noted, after not using computers for several years, that "nothing bad happened to me. And I said, 'Well, I could either learn the current system or learn differential geometry. I think I'll learn differential geometry this year.'"
- mhartl 17y agoPersi relies on collaborators and students for computer stuff. (I talked with him about this after a lecture he gave at Caltech. The lecture was on perfect shuffles, and involved a live demonstration of the technique.)
- TriinT 17y agoI assumed he does, indeed, rely on collaborators for computer stuff. After all, although Diaconis is a former magician, no amount of magic would cause the papers to write themselves. In fact, there were two things I liked about this passage: 1) the fact that he does not use a computer, 2) the fact that he does not know much of Differential Geometry. 1) makes me wonder if I waste too much time online. 2) makes me feel less bad for knowing so little of Differential Geometry ;-)
- pixcavator 17y agoHe is also involved in computational topology http://comptop.stanford.edu/ http://comptop.stanford.edu/.